Many people hate math and all of its evil cousins, such as algebra, calculus, and decimals. While one may argue that the real-life practical use of the first two is non-existent, it’s hard to be a business owner and not come across decimals frequently. This is especially true for the wise service-oriented business owners who use an online clock-in, clock-out system to capture accurate time for their remote hourly employees.
The minutes will be reflected in decimal form on most time card reports. But don’t fear…our time card reports give you the decimal format (used in payroll) and the equivalent time in hours and minutes (numbers we are used to seeing), so you don’t have to convert time.
For example, 4.35 hours is NOT 4 hours and 35 minutes. Because time is a number system with 60 as its base (not 100 based), converting time is not that easy. In reality, 4.35 hours is actually 4 hours and 21 minutes. The calculation is .35 x 60=21 minutes or 21÷60=.35.
It helps to think of the basic time conversions we know (see the last row in the chart):
• 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour, .25
• 30 minutes is half of an hour, .50
• 45 minutes is three-quarters of an hour, .75
• 60 minutes is one hour, 1.00
But who has time for all of that? We are all for keeping it simple. Below is a handy conversion chart. Feel free to print it off and refer to it when you have to convert time.
